Half the Size, Twice the Trouble
by Rose Madder
Summary: Ever wondered how the Senior Partners managed to stop apocalypse after Spike became corporeal again on Season's 5 Destiny? WIP
1. Prologue

Note: This story is a response to Pyro's "mini-Spike" challenge posted on the Chocolate Covered Strawberries board, and it takes place during the episode "Destiny" of season 5.

Credits: I don't own characters, I never meant to infringe anyone's copyrights, so please take this story for what it is -- fun -- and don't bother to suit me.

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"**_This_** is the Senior Partners' idea of making things right again?" Angel said, giving Gunn an astonished look.

"Well," Gunn reasoned, "they did stop the apocalypse."

"Did they?" Wes muttered, glancing warily at the energetic five year old who had already left his footprints on every piece of furniture in Angel's office and was now walking straight to the weapon rack with a resolute expression on his face.

While Angel made a wild run to stop the pint sized menace who didn't seem to understand -- or care about -- the meaning of the word "no", Gunn sighed and said:

"The Senior Partners had to do something to stop the shattering of reality, and they had to do it quickly. There shouldn't be two corporeal ensouled vampires in this realm, so they got rid of one of them... sort of."

"Still..." Wes started to say, but he was cut off by Angel's cry of pain. One second later, the little boy wearing a black T-shirt that went down to his knees darted past them and straight to the door.

"Stop him!" Angel shouted to his two nonplussed friends, jumping on one foot as he held his offended ankle.

Just then, the door was opened and both Fred and the boy yelped in surprise when he ran straight into her; he bounced back, landing on his butt while she jumped backwards and gave him a dumbfounded look.

"What! What... What?" -- she gave the grown ups an interrogative look, her eyes jumping from them to the child in front of her.

"I'm not a what," the object of her question informed her while going back to his feet. "I'm a who."

He cocked his head to the side, giving her a charming grin as he added:

"And you're pretty."

"This is, hum, William," Angel said, joining them.

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not." -- the boy crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave Angel a defiant look -- "I'm Spike."

"Spike?!?" Fred exclaimed, giving the blond -- natural blond, thank God for small favors -- boy an astounded look.

"You are five," Angel said, impatiently. "You can't be Spike; you're still William."

"I, I think this is barely the point here," Fred stuttered, raising her eyebrows at him. Then, turning to Spike-still-William again: "Spike?"

"Spike," he said, nodding his head vigorously. "I'm the Big Bad," he announced proudly. "And you're very pretty."

"If you're Spike," Wes said, giving Spike a worried look, "does that mean that you're a vampire?"

"Yep," the boy said, looking at the four grown ups gathered around him with a self-satisfied grin. "I'm Spike, and I'm a vampire, and I'm the Big Bad..."

"And Fred is pretty," Gunn said curtly. "We got it."

"Spike," -- the boy started to count on his fingers, blatantly ignoring the lawyer -- "vampire, Big Bad, pretty..."

He looked at his thumb, frowning. One finger left. Spike, vampire, Big Bad, pretty...

"Wanker!" he exclaimed, pointing triumphantly at Angel.

"Spike..." Wes started to say, while Spike burst into a fit of giggles and Angel let out an aggravated sigh.

"Spike??" Fred tried again between clenched teeth.

"Spike, vampire, Big Bad, pretty, wanker. Spike, vampire..."

Trying to ignore Spike as he merrily lilted the words again and again, Wes turned to Fred:

"This was the Senior Partners' brilliant idea to restore the balance."

"There weren't supposed to be two ensouled vampires in this realm," Fred muttered slowly, her eyes widening as the implications sank in. "But, if Spike's still a vampire..."

She gave the others a hesitant look and Gunn stated the question that was on everyone's mind:

"Does it mean that he doesn't have a soul?"


	2. It's My Chair

"I do have a soul," Spike said, glaring at Gunn. "And it stings," he added as an afterthought.

"That doesn't make sense," Wes said, rubbing his chin. "If Spike's still an ensouled vampire, then how...?"

"What?" Angel asked, puzzled, when his friends suddenly turned to him. "I still have my soul, too!" he exclaimed indignantly when the suspicion in their eyes kicked in.

"Maybe," Gunn offered, motioning his chin towards Spike, "he isn't really a vampire, after all."

"I am!" Spike exclaimed, frowning.

"Or maybe he doesn't have a soul," Wes pondered.

"I do!"

"Stop that," Fred scolded the grown ups. "You're upsetting him."

She kneeled down to Spike's level and said, opening her arms and motioning for him to come closer:

"Don't mind them, sweetie. Come on, give us a hug."

When Spike gladly threw his arms around her neck, she hugged him and kissed the side of his head.

"The heart's beating," she said, smiling at the others over his shoulder. "He's not a vampire."

"Am too!" Spike protested, pulling away in order to give her an offended look.

"Here," she said, taking his hand and placing it over his heart. She smiled when his eyes widened in shock: "You're a living little boy," she said, playfully tousling his hair.

"But I'm supposed to be a vampire!" Spike exclaimed, stomping his foot to the floor. Even as the words left his mouth, though, he didn't look so sure any more, and there was a hint of unsettlement in his eyes when he added: "Ain't I?"

"Maybe," Fred said, cautiously. "Or maybe not. That's what we need to find out."

"They made him shanshu," Angel muttered, shocked.

The others looked at him and he said, looking utterly disappointed despite his previous 'I-don't-care-about-prophecies' act:

"The Senior Partners stopped the apocalypse by making the ensouled vampire human again. Just like the prophecy said."

"I don't know," Fred said. She gave Wes an uncertain look. "Could it be?"

The others looked at Wes, but instead of answering he asked Gunn, motioning his chin towards Spike:

"Are you sure this was the Senior Partners' doing?"

"Positively," Gunn said, nodding.

"Then it has nothing to do with the Shanshu Prophecy," Wes said categorically.

"How can you be sure?" Angel asked, unconvinced.

"The Shanshu Prophecy is about powers that go back way before Wolfram and Hart," Wes explained. "It's definitely out of their league."

"He's human," Angel insisted. "Ensouled vampire turned human: how more shanshu-ed can you get?"

"It's the Senior Partners we're talking about," Wes reminded him. "I'd say all kinds of nasty side effects are to be expected."

"He seems fine to me," Fred said, gently patting the small hand that she still held in hers.

"He doesn't seem to have kept all his memories," Gunn remarked, giving Spike a critical look. "His mind may be pretty messed up."

"You know," Angel told Fred, "maybe you should take him to the lab and run some tests to..."

"I'm no lab rat!" Spike exclaimed, glaring at them while holding Fred's hand tighter.

"Will you stop?" Fred chided, giving the grown ups a reproachful look. "You're scaring him."

"I'm not scared," Spike protested.

"Fred, this is Spike," Wes pointed out. "He lacks the common sense to be scared."

Fred sighed, rolling her eyes at the three men who couldn't see through a little boy's bravado.

"Let's sit over there," she told Spike, pointing at the couch, "and we'll try and figure this whole thing out."

"I call the big chair!" Spike promptly exclaimed, letting go of her hand and running to the big leather chair behind Angel's desk.

"Hey!" -- Angel let out a cry of indignation and ran after Spike, but the boy beat him to the chair and quickly climbed onto it.

"That's my chair!" Angel protested, frowning down at him.

"I called it first," Spike replied with a smug grin.

"But it's mine!"

"Angel, he's five," Wes reminded him.

"He's Spike," Angel said, stubbornly. "And he's sitting on **_my_** chair."

"The chair likes me better," Spike gloated, sensing his upper hand. "It told me so."

"Chairs don't talk," Angel said with a sneer.

"They don't talk to you," Spike said, "because they don't like you. You're ugly and mean, and you use too much hair gel."

"Angel!..." -- Fred shot Angel an impatient look as she tugged on his hand and tried to make him sit on one of the several available chairs.

"It's **_my_** chair," the CEO of Wolfram and Hart muttered even as he sat on one of the other chairs, crossing his arms in front of his chest and refusing to make eye contact with Spike.

"Don't sulk," Fred gently chided, placing her chair between his and Spike's.

"I'm not sulking."

"You're..." she started to say, but then she gave up with a sigh. "So," she said, turning to Spike instead, "what can you tell us? What do you remember?"

"He didn't let me play with the swords," Spike said, pointing an accusing finger at Angel.

"Before that," Fred coached him.

Spike bit his lower lip, furrowing his brow as he tried to sort out his rather cloudy memories.

"A big owl flew into the kitchen last night," he said, holding up his hands apart from each other to show the owl's size. "It was big and white, and the servants screamed."

"And then, what?" Fred asked.

"Then they screamed some more."

She exchanged an uncertain look with the others. This was clearly a memory of his childhood; still, the Senior Partners hadn't wiped out all his memories from that time until today, or he wouldn't remember that he was known as Spike now, or that he was, or used to be, a vampire.

"Can't you tell me something that happened after the owl entered the kitchen and before Angel stopped you from playing with the swords?" she tried again.

"Like what?" Spike asked.

"Like, hum, anything," she said, shrugging.

"Do the stars sing in this place?" Spike asked out of the blue.

"No," Angel hastily said, while the others just gave them puzzled looks. "That would be D-R-U," he explained to them.

"D-R-U spells Dru," Spike said brightly, and Angel mentally smacked his own forehead.

"Do you know Dru?" Angel asked, warily.

"Nope," Spike replied, his unappalled expression indicating that the name really didn't ring a bell. He hesitated, frowning slightly as he tried to remember. "But I do know Dawn."

"You remember Dawn?" Angel asked, arching his eyebrows.

"She's supposed to be little," Spike said, tilting his head to the side. "But I think she's bigger than me. How can it be?" he asked Fred, giving her a puzzled look.

"Uh... I think, uh... Who is Dawn?" -- she turned to Angel for help.

"She's..." -- Angel hesitated then turned to Spike again -- "What do **_you_** know about Dawn?"

"She's Dawn," Spike said. He looked at their flat expressions and sighed, rolling his eyes. Some people needed to be explained things in details.

"She likes pizza, and marshmallow, and chocolate, and she says 'I'm telling!' a lot," he patiently told them. "And 'Mo-om!' and 'Please, please, please, like, times ten, and cubed! Please?' he whined in a high-pitched very convincing Dawn impersonation.

"That's Dawn, alright," Angel said, nodding his head and biting back a smile. He hesitated, studying Spike's face with a pensive look. "Do you remember, hum... anyone else?"

Spike gave Angel an impatient look and sighed roughly, plopping himself back on the chair.

"This game is boring," he declared. Then, turning to Fred: "Is there ice cream in this place? Strawberry ice cream," he quickly added, remembering that he was supposed to be a vampire. "Bright, red strawberry ice cream."

Before Fred could answer, the door was opened with a flourish and Lorne came in.

"Angel-cakes, word out there is that you've got the situation under control," he said. "How did..."

"This is Lorne!" Spike clamored, pointing at the green horned demon. "I remember Lorne," he said with a proud grin. "He sings."

"Hey there, little one," Lorne said, torn between amusement and puzzlement. "I'm Lorne, alright, and you would be...?"

He gave Angel an interrogative look and the vampire sighed and said:

"This is Spike."

"I'm Spike," the boy said, climbing down the chair to walk towards Lorne. "I'm..." -- he looked at Fred over his shoulder, giving her a somewhat sheepish look -- "Can I still be the Big Bad even if I'm not a vampire?"

Before Fred could answer, Lorne found his voice again.

"Spike?!?" he uttered, his eyebrows shooting up.

"Are you going to do the 'Spike? Eek! Oh! Uh! Spike!' thingy, too?" Spike said, shooting him an impatient look. "Everybody's been doing that, and it's not so fun any more."

"You know what would be really fun?" Wes said, trying to infuse into his voice an enthusiasm he didn't feel. "If you sang for Lorne; I think Lorne would love to listen to you sing."

"I don't think that would be any fun," Spike said, giving him a disdainful look. "Unless," he added, his face brightening at the idea, "I sing a scimitar song!"

"No scimitars," Angel said firmly, promptly standing up and placing himself between Spike and said scimitar. "No swords, no halberds, no battle axes. No anything that can kill or maim."

"Then I won't sing," Spike said, glaring at him.

"Won't you sing for me?" Fred asked, smiling.

"Nope."

"Won't you sing for ice cream?" Gunn asked.

Spike's face lit up, much to Fred's chagrin, but he quickly regained his wits and coolly asked:

"How much ice cream are we talking about here?"


	3. Songs and ice cream

"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's  
You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's"

Fred smiled at the Little Baddie jumping and spinning around himself while he hollered the words of the old nursery rhyme. She had feared that Spike would sing some hardcore punk thing, but clearly his memories from his childhood were stronger than the ones from his adult life.

"When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey  
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch"

She had to bite back laughter when she realized that Angel and Wes were softly humming the song along with Spike, both men subtly marking the rhythm with their heads.

"When will that be? say the bells of Stepney  
"I do not know, say the great bells of Bow"

Fred looked at Gunn and saw that he, too, had an amused glint in his eyes as he looked at his two friends. None of them noticed the frown on Lorne's face as he watched Spike work himself to a crescendo of enthusiasm until he reached the final (and rather dark) verses of the children's song:

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed!  
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!  
Chip chop chip chop - the last man's DEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAD!"

The last word was said with sheer glee as Spike threw his hands up into the air and extended the word for as long as his breath allowed him. He turned to Fred again with such a proud grin that she couldn't refrain herself from clapping her hands enthusiastically.

"Very good," she said. "You certainly earned that ice cream."

"Ice cream!" Spike exclaimed wholeheartedly. "You," he said, pointing at Gunn, "owe me ice cream. Lots of it," he added, "because it was such a great song."

Gunn understood that Spike would not be bargained with, so he reached out and picked up the phone on Angel's desk to dial Harmony's number and order the ice cream.

"Fred," Wes said, for the first time noticing the deep furrow across Lorne's brow and giving Fred a meaningful look, "why don't you and Spike go talk to Harmony about that ice cream instead?"

"And while you're at that," Angel chimed in, "why don't you get him some clothes, too?"

Fred smiled, looking from the barefoot boy, wearing only a grown up's black T-shirt, to the rest of his clothes, lying discarded on the floor.

"Come on, Fred!" Spike said, tugging on her hand. "We'll make her give you some ice cream, too!"

"Let's go," she said, whilst giving the others a look that said that she'd want a full report later.

Once Fred and Spike were gone and the door was closed behind them, Angel turned to Lorne again and asked:

"What have you read in his aura?"

Lorne sighed and scratched his head before saying:

"I had never sensed anything like that."

The others stared expectantly at him and he proceeded, giving them a perplexed look:

"That kid's aura is a mess. It's like he has no past and no future: just this fuzzy, shadowlike present." -- he sighed and shook his head -- "I have a bad feeling about this, boys."

- x x x x x -

While the four men discussed his current situation, Spike was sitting on Harmony's knees, wallowing in ice cream and for the first time not minding her calling him Blondie Bear, much to the girl's delight.

"And then," Harmony was saying, gleefully, "we're going to the mall, and we're going to shop for some clothes…"

"**_You _**are going to shop," Spike declared through a mouth full of ice cream. "I'm gonna play pinball."

"Blondi… Spike," -- Fred quickly corrected herself, blushing -- "honey, don't talk with your mouth full."

"Why not?"

"Because if you do everyone will see what's inside your mouth."

"It's ice cream," Spike informed her offhandedly. "See?" he said, showing her a spoonful of ice cream. "You can see it in the spoon, too."

"Well, yes, but…"

"Don't you think ice cream looks pretty?"

"I suppose it does, but…"

"Then why wouldn't people want to see it?"

"I-I…" Fred stammered, discomfited.

"You know, Fred," Spike said, cocking his head to the side and giving her a critical look, "you'd make a lousy vampire."

Fred gave him a flabbergasted look, not sure of whether or not she should be offended by his statement, while he slid from Harmony's knees and went to pat the physicist's arm affectionately.

"But I like you even so," he said solemnly.

"Me too," Harmony chimed in cheerfully. "Don't feel bad about that, Fred: being a vampire isn't for everyone."

"Do you know any vampires, Harmony?" Spike asked, turning to her again with an interested look on his face.

"I **_am_** a vampire, silly!" Harmony said, giggling.

"You are?" he asked, excited. "Can you make the scary face?"

"Sure!" Harmony said, promptly pushing her game face on.

"Cool!" Spike exclaimed, running to her side. "Can I touch them?" he asked, pointing at the bumps on her face.

"Why not?" she said, shrugging. "What's with the fuss, anyway?" she asked while he poked her face with great interest. "It's not like you don't have a game face, too."

"I don't," Spike sighed grudgingly.

"Of course you do," Harmony said.

"Harmony?" Fred called, tentatively. "You must have noticed that Spike is, uh…" -- she hesitated, not sure of how to break the news to the intellectually challenged vampire -- "…different?"

"He's little," Harmony deadpanned, all too busy showing Spike her fangs.

"He's little," Fred agreed, nodding her head. "Don't you wonder how he got this way?" she asked, addressing Harmony like she would do to a very slow child.

"The senior partners stopped the eclipse," Spike explained helpfully.

"There was an eclipse?" Harmony asked, curious. "When?"

"Apocalypse," Fred clarified, starting to get frustrated. "Like, this morning. Remember?"

"Right!" Harmony exclaimed, her face lighting up with comprehension. "**_That_** apocalypse. Everybody was acting weird, and Gunn tried to kill Eve and I had sex with…" -- she looked at Spike, who was watching them with interest, and her eyes widened in shock.

"Eew! Yuck!" Harmony shrieked, trying to block the thought that, a couple of hours ago, she was having sex with the grown up version of the little boy standing before her -- "Yuck! Yuck! Eeeeeeeeew!"

Just then, Angel opened the door in time to see Harmony freaking out, Fred blushing furiously and Spike looking from one girl to the other in utter confusion.

"Spike, what have you done?" Angel said, scowling down at the boy.

"She thinks I'm yucky because I'm not a vampire," Spike said sulkily, crossing his arms in front of his chest and staring down.

"Oh, honey, no!" Fred exclaimed, promptly moving to the boy's side. "No one thinks you're yucky! Being human isn't yucky," she said kindly, placing her hand on his shoulder. "It's good: you can breath, and your heart beats, and… and…" -- she frowned, trying to think of more good things to say about being human, since so far she didn't seem to be succeeding in cheering him up.

"And you can walk in the sun," Angel said yearningly.

"The sun!" Spike repeated, his eyes growing wide with excitement.

He turned to Angel with a thrilled look, a look that the vampire could easily recognize as that of someone who had spent more than a century exiled in the shadows.

"I wanna play in the sun!" Spike yelled, his bright eyes already scanning the room, looking for the door that would lead him out to where the sun shone.

"Do you want me to take him to the park?" Fred asked Angel, smiling at the boy's enthusiasm.

"I'd rather keep him in the building," Angel said cautiously. "And I still want to talk to you about what Lorne told us."

He turned towards his office and called out:

"Gunn!"

When Gunn came through the door with an inquisitive look, Angel told him:

"Take Spike to play at the training ground at sector B and keep an eye on him while he's there."

Fred raised her eyebrows and he added, shrugging:

"It's an open area; there's sun, earth, mud, water, rocks… anything a boy could want," he added with a hint of longing in his voice.

"Why me?" Gunn protested.

"Do you want me to send Wes to watch over him?" Angel asked.

"Yes!"

Angel eyeballed him and Gunn sighed, knowing that the former watcher wouldn't last fifteen minutes babysitting a five-year-old… ten, said five-year-old being Spike.

"Special Ops Squad is training there right now," he still argued.

"Tell them to leave," Angel ordered.

"But we were going to shop for new clothes for him!" Harmony chimed in.

"I'm this big," Spike said, spreading his arms and giving her a full view of himself, "and I look great in black. Knock yourself out."

"Harmony," Angel reasoned, "you don't wanna take a five-year-old to the mall, and you **_definitely_** don't wanna take a five-year-old Spike to the mall. Here," he said, taking a credit card out of his wallet and handing it to his secretary. "Buy him some clothes and shoes…"

"And a toothbrush," Fred added practically.

"And… all right," -- Angel sighed when Harmony gave him the most pathetic puppy eyes he had ever seen -- "you can also buy something for yourself while you're there."

"Thank you, boss!" Harmony said, exultant. "You're the best!"

She quickly grabbed her purse and darted towards the elevator and, after one last glare from Angel, a sullen Gunn followed suit, with Spike merrily skipping along.

Before they left, Angel looked at Spike again and said with unexpected gentleness:

"Enjoy the sun."


	4. Hurt

"Harmony, what did I say to you?" Angel said, sternly.

"Buy something for yourself," Harmony said, defensively.

"Harmony," Angel said between clenched teeth, "this" - he motioned his hand, encompassing the ten shopping bags resting at his secretary's feet - "isn't 'something'. This is 'everything' they had in the freaking mall."

"Did you at least remember to buy some clothes for Spike?" Wes asked.

"Of course I did!" Harmony exclaimed indignantly. "A 'thank you' would be nice," she muttered, glaring at Angel while handing Wes one of the bags.

"Harm, darling, is that a Louis Vuitton logomark I'm seeing?" Lorne asked excitedly.

"You shopped at **_Louis Vuitton _**with the company's credit card?" Angel bellowed.

Before Harmony could answer, a mud covered Spike stormed out of the elevator, leaving a sludge trail behind him as he ran towards them.

"Fred," he exclaimed excitedly, "did you know that crushed bedbugs stink really, really, really bad?"

"Oh, yes, they do," Gunn muttered gloomily as he, too, came out of the elevator, looking not so clean himself and, as the others noticed as he joined them, smelling like a whole swarm of crushed bedbugs.

"Yuck!" Harmony squeaked ever so tactfully, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "I've been to graves that smell better than you do!"

"I told you to duck," Spike admonished Gunn, while the lawyer glowered at Harmony.

"Well," Fred chimed in, giving the muddy pair an amused smile, "I think a nice, hot bath is in order."

"You bet," Spike said conversationally, while leaning forward to peer into one of Harmony's shopping bags. "Although I think you'd better put baldy over there on quarantine until the reek wears off."

"I'm pretty sure she's referring to you, Blondie Bear," Harmony said, quickly shooing the pint sized vampire wannabe away from her precious belongings.

"Not interested," he deadpanned.

"Too bad," Angel said, glaring at the muddy footprints that Spike was leaving as he wandered around the place, "because you're taking a bath anyway."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Yes, I am."

"No, you're… Hey!" Angel exclaimed indignantly as he realized that he had nearly fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

He narrowed his eyes at Spike, giving him the most menacing face he could summon:

"You're. Taking. A bath."

Spike crossed his arms in front of his chest and said, glaring back at him with a menacing face of his own:

"Who's. Gonna. Make me?"

Just as Angel opened his mouth to say that he was, it suddenly dawned on him that the little boy standing before him, covered in dirt and staring defiantly at him, was also his 124-year-old grandchilde. He flinched and glanced tentatively at the others, but they all quickly backed off.

"There's absolutely no way I'm gonna get in the shower with him!" Gunn said firmly.

"Th-that'd be… weird," Fred stammered, blushing, while Wes mumbled something about a book-related emergency and hastily took off.

Angel turned to Harmony and Lorne only to find out that those two had already disappeared, without even bothering to make an excuse; seeing that all his lieutenants had deserted him, he sighed in defeat and turned to Spike again.

"If you get in the bathtub all by yourself," he offered, "and only come out of it when there isn't the slightest trace of mud on you, I'll get you a battle-axe." Behind him, Fred gasped, and he quickly added: "A plastic one, so that you can play Big Bad."

"Can I take my axe to the bathtub with me?" Spike asked.

"Absolutely," Angel said, nodding. "But you must give me your word."

"I'll get in the bathtub," Spike said mindfully, "with my axe. And we'll take a bath, and we'll get out of it once we're all nice and clean."

"It's a deal," Angel said, grinning and inwardly congratulating himself. Now, that hadn't been so difficult, had it? The kid might be a little hellion but, come on! It was just Spike: he had always known how to handle Spike.

- x x x x x -

"Next time make sure you mention that he also must have his clothes on!" Gunn shouted as he, Angel and Wes chased a butt-naked, soaking wet Spike around Angel's private chamber.

"You're the sneaky lawyer here, not me!" Angel protested, nearly tripping on his own feet as Spike went running past him, hollering at the top of his lungs and spinning his battle-axe over his head.

"HI-YAH!"

Wes jumped forward, ready to intercept him, but the battle-axe hit the side of his head and sent his glasses flying across the room. While Wes groped around the room, desperately trying to retrieve his glasses, Spike dodged Gunn and did a running dash to the door; he was almost there when his wet feet slipped on the well-polished floor of Angel's bedroom, and he let out a small cry of surprise as he found himself sliding across the floor until he hit the wall with a painful thud.

"Ha!" Angel exclaimed as he jumped towards the boy. "That'll teach you not to…"-; he stopped mid sentence, though, shocked beyond words to see Spike aka William the Bloody aka Hostile 17 aka the Big Bad suddenly burst into heartfelt tears.

Before Angel could react, the door was opened and Fred came in like a bolt, with Harmony close on her heels.

"What happened?" Fred asked, kneeling before the boy and giving him a concerned look while gently cupping his face between her hands.

"What have you done to him?" Harmony demanded, giving Angel a reproachful look while she kneeled on the floor next to Fred and reached out to fondle Spike's hair. "Did he hurt you, Blondie Bear?"

"Hurt!" Spike wailed, burying his face on Fred's chest.

"I didn't…" Angel started to protest when the two women glared at him, but he stopped when Spike spoke again.

"They laughed at me," the boy cried, "and there were chains, and the fire, and everybody hated me, and she bit me and it hurt, and the knives, and I hadn't a soul, but then I had one, and it burned me, and they chained me in the bathtub, and the whip…"

The grown ups watched in shock as the hurt of 124 years came crashing down on a five-year-old child who didn't even understand what was hurting him, since he didn't have the memories related to the pain.

"… and no one believed me, and I was beneath her, all alone in the basement, and it hurt my head, and I couldn't move my legs, and there were monsters, many monsters, many, many, many…"

He raised his head from Fred's chest to gasp for breath and cried out:

"I want my mum!"

"Sweetie, we don't…" Fred started to say, but Spike wouldn't listen: he wanted one thing in the whole world and he wouldn't settle for anything else.

"MUMMY!"

"But…"

"He's right," Wes hastily said, kneeling by Fred's side and giving her a meaningful look, silently urging her to let him handle that. "The boy wants his mum, and that's very understandable."

Having recently learned the circumstances of the death of Spike's mother, Wes was anxious to stop the flow of memories before the five-year-old was forced to deal with yet another traumatizing experience.

"But first you must put some clothes on," he said, motioning for Gunn to bring him the clothes that Harmony had bought earlier.

"And then you're gonna take me to my mum?" Spike sniffed, giving Wes a wary look.

"Now, you'll have to work with me here," Wes said gently, remembering that telling him about his mother's death had been Spike's own clumsy way of being supportive when Wes was in a rather bad place regarding his relationship with his own father. "We need to find out how you got here if we are to help you go back."

"To my mum?" Spike insisted adamantly.

"Yes," Wes said without missing a beat. Even if Spike still remembered that conversation after they undid whatever it was that the Senior Partners had done to him, Wes as sure that, as a grown up, the vampire wouldn't hold that lie against him.

Spike narrowed his eyes, not looking convinced, and Wes sighed. He felt a pang of compassion towards the boy sitting on the floor before him, still clinging to Fred's jacket, his face reddish and wet with tears.

"Look, little mate," he said, "I know that this is a lot to ask for, but I'm going to ask you anyway: I need you to trust me, and to believe me when I say that I mean you no harm and that I want to help you."

Spike tilted his head to the side, squinting his eyes and giving Wes a suspicious look. The boy glanced inquisitively at Fred, and she smiled and nodded her head:

"Wes won't hurt you," she said reassuringly. She looked at Wes and added with a soft smile that made him blush furiously: "I would trust him with my life."

"Okay," Spike said quietly, allowing Fred to help him put his clothes on while Angel took Wes by his elbow and made him stand up.

"Help him go back?" he repeated between clenched teeth, pulling Wes away from Spike so that they were out of ear reach.

"He's five," Wes replied in the same tone, "and trapped in a grown-up's nightmare."

Angel, who had played an active role in that nightmare, shuffled his feet, and replied with a sigh:

"If we revert him back to his previous self, we'll be back where we started, with two ensouled vampires in this realm, and the fabric of reality unraveling all around us."

Wes opened his mouth to argue, but Angel held up his hand, cutting him off.

"Gunn," he said, "go to the white room and tell the big cat that thanks, but no, thanks. We need them to restore…"-; he arched his eyebrows meaningfully towards Spike - "… his former self and find another way to stop the apocalypse."

"I just hope I won't regret it," Angel grumbled, while Wes relaxed his assertive stance and Fred beamed at him, not the least fooled by his big bad vampire's façade.

"Harmony," he proceeded, "find Eve and tell her to meet in my office. Fred, go to the lab, gather your staff, see what they can find out."

He hesitated, remembering Spike's first reaction to the idea of being taken to the lab to have some tests run.

"And take Spike with you to, uh, to help you."

"No!" Spike said, frowning. "I'm going with Wes," he declared. "He's gonna help me find my mum."

He marched to Wes' side and then, much to the former watcher's bafflement, took his hand and demanded, tugging impatiently on it:

"Come on, we're wasting time."

"Fred will be working on it, too," Angel reasoned while Wes looked from Spike to the others, nonplused. "And she's gonna need your help."

"And what will Wes be doing?" Spike asked, cocking his head to the side.

"He'll be looking for answers in the books," Angel said. "Pretty boring stuff," he assured Spike.

"I resent that," Wes protested, frowning. "Books can be very…"

"Unless, of course," Angel said, giving his friend a pointed look, "Wes needs your help handling all those precious, ancient parchments and those very fragile and rare books."

"Did you know that Fred has a Leptons Linear Accelerator down in the lab?" Wes promptly asked Spike.

"What's a Leptons-whatnot?" Spike asked, wrinkling his nose.

"I have absolutely no idea," Wes said truthfully. "But I'm sure it's loads of fun."


	5. Research

Note #1: First of all, let me apologize for the delay. The Muse was tired and stressed out and didn't want to sing. Hopefully, after a much needed and long overdue vacation, she's now back to her usual cheerful self. :-)

Note #2: Freezyboncoolipants, I have just started to read your "Inner Child, Outer Child" fic, and so far it's **_very_** good, so funny and cute! I'll make sure to leave a review.

Note #3: Imzadi, I'm afraid there'll be no Lindsey in this story. I watched only a few episodes prior to season 5, which means I know very little about him. I'll have to do some research before I can write a story with him, but I promise that I'll give the idea some thought.

- x x x x x -

"So," Angel said, joining Fred as she stood before the counter, "any progress?"

"No," she sighed, shaking her head as she turned the Bunsen burner off and carefully put the beaker aside. "From a physical approach, he seems to be absolutely human and normal. His blood type is AB, by the way."

"It's a good thing that his attention span is so short," she added, looking at Spike, who was across the room nagging Knox to let him hold the electron microscope. "Unless Wes' team is doing much better than we are here, I suggest you start thinking of sleeping arrangements."

"I see you already know about the Senior Partners' answer," Angel said bitterly.

"Yes," Fred said, pursing her lips in discontentment as she turned her attention back to the contents of the beaker. "Gunn stopped by earlier."

"Stopping an apocalypse isn't a small deal," Eve's nonchalant voice made Angel and Fred jump in place and they turned around to face the blonde as she glided into the lab "You can't very well expect them to go out of their way just to meet your personal agenda."

Fred's tart answer was cut off by a commotion across the room.

"You little monster!" Knox was saying angrily. "I'm gonna show you…"

He reached out for Spike and the boy bared his wannabe fangs, but Knox suddenly found himself restrained by the strong hand that grabbed his wrist.

"Don't call him that," Angel hissed, glowering at him.

"But you…" Knox stuttered, vainly trying to free his arm from Angel's steely grip. "You've been calling him worse since he first showed up here," he protested lamely.

"And I sustain it," Angel said, frowning. "Every word. But that's between him and me."

"He bit me!" Knox whined, showing the small tooth marks on his forearm.

"Spike!" Fred chided as she joined them. "Honey, it's not nice to bite people."

Spike pouted and scuffed his foot to the floor, and Fred placed her hand on his shoulder, already mollified.

"This whole thing isn't easy for him," she said, turning to Knox. "We have to be patient: he's just a little boy."

"Well, little boys shouldn't try to snatch highly expensive, state-of-the-art equipment from the hands of grown ups," Knox muttered, glaring at Spike.

"Oh, sweetie," Fred said, kneeling down to Spike's level, "these things are fragile and very expensive. You can't play with them."

"But I'm bored," Spike argued.

Fred looked around, trying to think of something that might entertain him, but nothing in the lab seemed fit for the hands of a five-year-old.

"He's been here for almost two hours," Angel sighed. "I suppose I could find something for him to do upstairs," he muttered, grudgingly.

"I'm sure you can," Fred promptly said, giving him a grateful look. As much as she liked the little boy, trying to get some work done with him around was burdensome.

To Spike, she said with a smile:

"It's almost dinnertime. Why don't you go with Angel for a while, and I'll join you two for dinner when I'm done here?"

"I don't wanna go with Peaches," Spike complained. "He's no fun."

"It won't take long," Fred promised. "Besides, Angel has a scary face, too," she added, remembering how excited the boy had been to see Harmony's game face. "Even scarier then Harmony's."

"Please," she pleaded sweetly when he still didn't look convinced, and Spike finally relented with a long-suffering sigh.

"Okay," he mumbled reluctantly.

Fred smiled with relief and gave him a kiss before she went back to work, while Spike lightly patted the plastic battle axe that was resting in the holster strapped across his back, saying:

"Let's go, Doombringer."

"Doombringer?" Angel repeated, raising his eyebrows.

"I strongly advise you not to mess with Doombringer," Knox said in a less than sympathetic voice before he turned on his heels and followed Fred.

Angel sighed and rolled his eyes when Spike stuck his tongue out at Knox's back, but decided that it just wasn't worth the effort.

"How come you can't recall anything that happened yesterday," he said to Spike as they left the lab, "yet you seem to remember every insulting name you used for me during the last century?"

- x x x x x -

Wesley raised his eyes from the book he was reading when he heard Angel knocking at the door.

"I hope you're here to bring me good news from the tech front," he said wearily as he looked at Angel standing at the doorway.

"Nothing?" Angel asked in dismay, pointing at the several books spread around his friend's office.

"Nothing," Wes sighed, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "It's rather difficult when I don't know what I'm looking for in the first place; I was hoping that either Fred or Gunn would be able to tell me what was actually done to him before I started looking for ways to revert it."

"Fred is still waiting for the results of some of the tests that they ran," Angel offered, entering the room and sitting on a chair across the table from Wes. "Maybe she'll have something for you tomorrow."

"I certainly hope so," Wes said. "Where is he, by the way?"

"Lorne agreed to watch him for a while," Angel said. Glancing at his watch, he added: "But he has dinner plans, so he should be dropping Spike here any minute now."

"Here?" Wes said, raising his eyebrows.

"Harmony and Gunn have already left, and Fred is busy in the lab," Angel told him. "Once Lorne leaves, there'll be no one left."

"What about **_you_**?"

"I'll have to baby-sit for the whole night," Angel pleaded. "Come on, allow me a few last moments of peace before I'm left alone with him."

As if on cue, Lorne entered the room with Spike.

"And here we are," he announced as he ushered the boy into Wes' office.

Angel and Wesley stared agape as Spike proudly walked into the room, wearing a costume that consisted on a large black hat, a silvery mask a la Phantom of the Opera, a black cape with a hood… and Doombringer.

Seeing the looks on the faces of the two men, Lorne said, adjusting his own bow tie:

"Big Bads can be stylish, too."

"Now, remember," he said turning to Spike and friendly patting the boy's face, "you behave tonight, and tomorrow I'll bring you a piece of Paris Hilton's birthday cake."

The boy nodded happily, and Lorne straightened up, looking at Angel and Wes again.

"Ciao," he said with a smile and light wave of his hand.

While Lorne left, merrily singing "Music of the Night", Spike walked towards Wes' desk and climbed on the chair next to Angel's.

"What are you doing?" he asked Wes, leaning over the desk to peer at the book open before the ex-Watcher. "Don't you have books with pictures?" he said, frowning at the pages covered in Sumerian writing. "Did you know that Lorne can tap dance?" he asked without as much as a pause.

"Well," Angel said, standing up, "I see that the two of you have a lot to talk about. I'll be in my office if you need me; but I'm sure you won't," he added, giving Wes a pointed look.

"No more bitting," he warned Spike before he left.

"He has bitten someone?" Wes asked, alarmed.

"Not someone," Spike said disdainfully. "Just Knox."

"You bit Knox?" Wes said, perking up.

"He was being a pain in the ass," Spike said.

When Wes' smile widened, Angel admonished him:

"Wes, don't encourage him."

"I would never do such a thing!" Wes protested in a totally unconvincing way.

As Angel left, rolling his eyes, he turned to Spike again and asked conspiratorially:

"How did he taste?"

"Like socks," Spike answered in the same tone, grinning. "And he screamed like a girly girl."

Sensing that he had an ally here, he asked:

"Are you staying to have dinner with Fred, Peaches and I?"

"As a matter of fact," Wesley said, grinning back at him, "I am. Would you and Doombringer like to order some pizza?"


	6. Havoc is my name

"Why in the name of everything that's sane and holy did you give a five-year-old who already had an ice cream feast earlier today," Angel said as he walked Wes and Fred to the elevator, "an extra dose of sugar in the form of brownies?"

"Well, uh, the pizza place… You see," Wes stuttered, avoiding his friend's eyes, "they were running this special promotion…"

"What kind of promotion?"

"The kind that if you give them more money they'll give you brownies?" Wes said sheepishly. That made Fred giggle, and he blushed furiously. Then again, how could anyone **_not _**give candy to a lad who had bitten Knox and made him scream like a girly girl?

"Great," Angel grouched. "Now everybody gets to go home, while I'm stuck with a hyperactive five-year-old vampire wannabe, who has a battle axe that he calls Doombringer and is in for a major sugar rush."

"I offered to take him home with me," Fred reminded him.

"Yes, you did," Angel admitted with a sigh. "I appreciate your offer, Fred; I just think that it would be wiser to keep him here until we know more about his, hum… condition."

"I know," Fred said with a smile. "And you're probably right."

The elevator doors slid open with a ding; just as Fred and Wes said goodnight to Angel and walked into the elevator, they heard a loud crashing sound coming from Angel's office. Swearing under his breath, the vampire swirled on his heels and darted back to his office. While the doors slowly closed before them, Wes and Fred could hear Spike's vehement claim:

"It was already broken when I dropped it!"

- x x x x x -

Angel woke up instantly as his heightened vampire hearing caught the subtle sound of the door being opened; his eyes snapped open, but he laid perfectly still, listening intently as the quiet footsteps approached his bed. He was about to jump out of bed and lash towards the intruder's throat when the familiar scent triggered recognition.

"Spike, what are you doing here?"

"There are monsters in that bedroom," Spike informed him, already climbing on the bed. "Doombringer was scared."

"What, wait, what are you doing?" -- Angel sat up on the bed, bewildered, as the boy slid under the covers with him, clutching the aforementioned plastic weapon.

"I'm trying to sleep," Spike said pointedly, "if you just shut up."

"I thought you didn't like me," Angel said, while Spike gingerly slid Doombringer under the pillow.

"I don't," the boy replied without missing a beat. "But I like the monsters even less."

"Well, that's flattering," Angel sighed as he warily laid back on the bed by his grandchilde's side.

"It can't be," Spike reasoned with his eyes already closed, "because I don't know what this word means."

He wiggled closer to Angel, somehow managing to worm himself into his embrace, much to the vampire's disconcert. While Angel stared, stunned, at the blond head resting peacefully on his arm, the boy's breathing became steadier and slower, and soon it was clear that he was sound asleep.

Angel craned his neck to look at the digital clock sitting on the nightstand: it was past 3 am. He rested his head back on the pillow with a tired sigh; usually he wouldn't be in bed at 3 am, but this had been some unusual day, even for the Fang Gang's standards. With a resigned sigh, he made himself comfortable by his grandchilde's side and closed his eyes, hoping to catch some sleep before the little hellion woke up.

- x x x x x -

Less than four hours later, Angel's heightened senses saved him once again as he opened his eyes just in time to catch Spike tiptoeing towards him with a red marker in one hand and a toothpaste tube in the other.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked when the incriminating evidence promptly disappeared behind Spike's back.

"Nothing," the boy said, glaring at him.

"Spike…" -- Angel dragged out the word in a warning tone.

"What?" Spike asked haughtily, whilst taking one step back.

"Spike, give me those," Angel ordered, sitting up and throwing his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Give you what?" Spike insisted, taking yet another step away from him.

"Give them to me while I'm still asking nicely," Angel glowered, narrowing his eyes.

"I think Knox likes Fred," Spike said, going for a diversion tactic. He took another step away from Angel, but didn't look the least intimidated by his grandsire's threatening stance. "But Wes likes her, too," he proceeded as Angel stood up. "I think Fred should date him and not Knox."

"Can we kill Knox after breakfast?" he asked offhandedly. "If we kill him, I'll let you eat him."

"No killing," Angel said, thus proving that his attention span was even shorter than that of the five-year-old. "And most definitely no eating."

"I don't wanna eat Knox," Spike said, wrinkling his nose in sincere repugnance. "I wanna eat French toasts."

"We don't have French toasts," Angel deadpanned, turning towards the door to the bathroom of his suite.

"But I want French toasts!" Spike demanded, stomping his foot to the floor, which proved to be a bad idea as he accidentally dropped the marker that he had been holding behind his back all along.

There was a pregnant silence in the room while both of them looked at the red marker, until Spike raised his eyes from it and turned to Angel again.

"Is this yours?" he asked, unabashed, pointing at the marker with his right hand while his left hand remained safely out of sight.

"Okay, that's enough," Angel snarled, jumping towards him.

Before he reached Spike, though, the boy suddenly threw the toothpaste tube across the room. When Angel stopped on his tracks, distracted by the movement, Spike quickly ducked under his arm and darted past him, nimbly climbing on the bed and grabbing Doombringer.

"Havoc is my name!" he bellowed, waving the battle-axe as he jumped back to the floor on the other side of the bed. "I fear no ooooooone!"

As Angel chased the pajama clad hurricane around the room, he wondered if the Senior Partners would remain so adamant about not restoring Spike's grown up self if they had to spend a couple of hours baby sitting. Right now, another apocalypse sounded like a rather reasonable alternative.

"Chaos I bring! Havoc I wreck! Mayhem…"

"Good morning!" -- the door swung open, as Harmony chose that particular day to humor her boss by bringing him his breakfast in bed.

The vampiress shrieked and shut her eyes when she saw Spike and Doombringer running right into her, and Angel watched in helpless dismay as the inevitable collision occurred and his favorite mug made a wide arch in the air and landed on the floor with a crash.

"Hi, Harm! Bye, Harm!" Spike greeted as he bounced back to his feet and ran around her and out of Angel's bedroom.

"This is hardly the place to play tag!" Harmony scolded, glaring at Angel and at the porcelain fragments and the blood pooled on the floor. "Don't expect me to clean this," she muttered, swirling on her heels and leaving.

"We're not… Oh, forget it!" Angel exclaimed, unceremoniously pushing her aside and following Spike. "Spike! Come back here, now!"

"Wes!" Spike said enthusiastically, running towards Wesley as this one entered Angel's private antechamber. "Hi!"

"Hi, there," Wes said with a smile. He reached out to friendly ruffle the boy's hair before realizing that said hair already looked rather disheveled. Then he took in Spike's bare feet and red pajamas and turned to Angel, who was standing at the doorway that led to the bedroom, wearing some old sweat pants and an undershirt and looking quite unkempt himself.

"Maybe Harmony and I can get him ready for breakfast while you get dressed?" he offered, taking pity on his friend. "You look like you could use a break."

- x x x x x -

Twenty minutes later, as Angel entered his office, he was greeted by the smell of the French toasts that Harmony had somehow managed to summon. He opened his mouth to complain that she was never that efficient when it came to providing for **_his_** needs, but a brand new mug filled with blood bought his silence.

He received the mug from Harmony's hands and went to sit behind his desk without a word; only when he sat on his chair with a sigh and took a big gulp of the blood did Angel notice the stunned looks turned towards him. Fred had joined Wes, Spike and Harmony while they waited for him, and now the three grown-ups were staring at him with their mouths agape.

"What?" Angel asked, all the more warily because Spike was the only one who was grinning, not looking the least surprised by whatever it was that had rendered the grown-ups speechless.

"You… uh… your hair…" Fred stammered.

"What about my hair?" Angel asked, his apprehension growing as he was reminded that he wasn't able to see his own hair in the mirror.

"It's…" -- Wes tilted his head to the side, giving Angel an incredulous look -- "glittering."

"Next time you want to innovate, boss, ask Lorne for some fashion tips," Harmony said, giving him a critical look. "Glitter hair gel is so eighties!"

Angel's eyes grew wide with shock and outrage as he understood what was going on; at first he was torn between the urge to return to his quarters to wash the glitter off his hair before anyone else saw him and the wish to stay in his office to yell at Spike. In the end, his pride took the best of him and he dashed out of the room with one last menacing glare towards his brat of a grandchilde.

"Where did you get the glitter, Blondie Bear?" Harmony asked after Angel left, slamming the door shut behind him.

"I borrowed some from the supplies' cabinet," Spike said conversationally, reaching out for another French toast.

"You keep glitter in the supplies' cabinet?" Fred said, giving Harmony a puzzled look.

"You broke into the supplies' cabinet?" Wesley said to Spike, raising his eyebrows disapprovingly.

"Nope," the boy promptly replied, shaking his head. "I used the key."

"How did you get the key?" Wes pushed.

"I broke into Harm's desk."

"What!" Harmony shrieked.

"Spike…" Fred started to say, but Wes held up his hand, silencing her.

"Spike," he said gravely, standing up and going to sit by the boy's side, "that makes two wrong things that you've done. One, you broke into Harmony's desk to get the key to the supplies' cabinet, and two, you used the glitter you took from the supplies' cabinet to vex Angel."

"I needed the key," Spike said, defensively.

"Considerations about the use you made of it aside," Wes patiently said, "it was Harmony's key and it was inside her desk. You should have asked her."

"But she wasn't here," Spike retorted, giving him an impatient look.

"Then you should have waited until she arrived this morning," Wes said. "Just because you want something that belongs to someone else, it doesn't give you the right to take it without their permission. How would you feel if Angel took Doombringer away from you?"

The boy's eyes widened in shock and he promptly grabbed the plastic axe that was resting against his chair.

"He can't have Doombringer!" he exclaimed, clutching it against his chest. "It's mine!"

"What if he really wants to use it while you're not around for him to ask?" Wes reasoned.

"But it's mine!" Spike protested heatedly, his face starting to get red with indignant anger.

"And the desk is Harmony's, and so is everything that's inside it," Wes said. "If you take what you want without regard to other people's rights, everyone will be entitled to do the same."

Spike sniffed loudly to express his discontent, but didn't reply right away.

"So," he finally said, still holding the toy tight and giving Wes a suspicious look, "if I don't mess with Harmony's stuff, Angel won't mess with Doombringer?"

"If you respect other people's rights, they'll respect yours, too," Wes said. "And," he proceeded, "speaking of respect, let's talk about Angel's hair."

He was so absorbed in his conversation with Spike that he never noticed the thoughtful look that Fred was giving him. She was watching their interplay with great interest: after meeting Wes' father -- or at least the cyborg emulating Roger Wyndam-Price -- she knew for sure that this gentle approach wasn't something he had learned at home, and she could only guess that Wes was a natural. _A natural dad_, she thought, blushing a little at the warm tingle that the thought sent through her.

"I don't like that poof," Spike said sullenly, "and he doesn't like me, either."

"You two have your differences," Wes conceded. "But Angel is taking good care of you, nonetheless. He sent Harmony to the mall to buy you new clothes, and he let you go play in the sun. He gave you Doombringer, and he's doing everything he can to reverse what the Senior Partners did to you; he hasn't done anything to make you look silly in front of your friends."

Spike's lower lip jutted out and he stared sulkily at his feet, and Wes gently placed his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I'm not asking you to apologize to Angel," he said, knowing that the two vampires went way back, and that their history together wasn't something he could comprehend or judge by his human standards. "All I'm asking is that you promise to me -- and to him -- that you won't do anything like this again."

Spike didn't answer and kept his eyes trained on his feet, swinging them back and forth over the edge of the chair, and Wes sighed.

"I know that this sounds like a lot to ask," he said. "I know that you and Angel aren't exactly good friends. But this pettiness, it's…" -- he suddenly had an inspiration, remembering something that Spike had mentioned during his outburst the day before -- "It's beneath you."

Spike's head jolted up and he gave Wesley an uneasy look.

"You're better than this," Wes assured him.

"I'm an evil dead thing," Spike muttered, frowning.

"You're not dead," Wes reminded him. "And if you once were evil," he proceeded, and he was utterly surprised to realize that he actually believed his words, "I don't think you are any more."

Just then, the door was opened, and Angel entered with his hair still wet from the recent shower. He strolled straight towards Spike and towered above the boy, glaring at him, and Spike narrowed his eyes and glared back at him. Before Angel could say a word, though, Spike sputtered:

"I-won't-mix-glitter-with-your-hair-gel-again-and-I-won't-do-anything-to-make-you-look-like-a-silly-ponce-and-I-will-never-break-into-Harm's-desk-not-even-if-I-really-really-need-something-and-she's-not-around-for-me-to-ask."

He paused to breath after his non-stop little speech and then added, nodding his head decisively:

"So there."

Angel blinked, bewildered, and just stared wordless at the boy. He turned to Wes with an inquisitive look, and this one patted Spike's shoulder approvingly before turning to the vampire again.

"Fred has already checked the results of the last exams," he said, willing to leave the glitter incident behind. "They didn't show anything new."

Angel's face fell, but Wes proceeded with a smile:

"But I have an idea, and I think it might just work."


	7. Alternative Ways

Angel tapped his fingers on the desk and fidgeted in his chair, unable to conceal his growing frustration. He had been sitting there for a good twenty minutes, watching as Wes talked to secretary after secretary after secretary, and just when it seemed that the last barrier had finally been overcome, a new one had risen.

Wes closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Giles, we're not… Yes, I know that Wolfram and Hart… Look, if you just… I just need to talk to her!" he snapped, his voice suddenly rising to match his frustration.

"Hello? Giles?" -- Wes stared at the phone in shock. When he turned to the others, he looked floored. "He hung up on me."

"He hung up on me," he repeated quietly, and Fred stood up and walked towards him, gently taking the receiver from his hand and hanging up.

She rubbed his shoulders while he stared dejectedly at the phone, and Angel frowned, his lips pressed in a thin line as he looked at Spike: the boy was lying on his stomach across the room, with a sheet of paper and a box of crayons, absorbed in his drawing and blissfully oblivious to the grown ups' hardships.

"Son of a…"

"Language!" Wes and Fred warned the vampire in one voice, gesturing frantically towards Spike.

"Oh, please, he knows more swear words than the two of you put together!" Angel protested tiredly, and Fred gave him a sympathetic look, already mollified by the weary look on his face. She couldn't really blame him for his outburst, not when she herself felt like taking the first flight to England just to give a certain Watcher a piece of her mind.

Fred looked from Angel to the drawing that was sitting on his desk, portraying the archetypical happy family and their white picket fence house… with padlocks almost the size of the chained doors and windows, "to keep the monsters out". She sighed and took her eyes off the drawing to meet Wes' equally concerned look.

"If Giles won't listen to you, do you think that, maybe… someone else…" -- Fred's voice trailed off and she shuffled her feet, unable to sustain Wes' look.

"You mean, my father?" he finished the sentence for her with a sad, humorless smile. "We should be so lucky."

There was a dejected silence in the room as the three of them sat there and just looked at each other, feeling that they had reached a dead end.

"This isn't right." -- Fred suddenly straightened up, taking her hands off Wesley's shoulders.

"So, Giles won't tell us how to contact Willow." -- her expression was determined as she started to pace back and forth across the room, counting on her fingers -- "Buffy is unlisted, Xander has this hermit thing going on..."

Fred stopped in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips and her brow furrowed in thought.

"There must be someone else who knows how to reach Willow," she muttered slowly. "Someone who doesn't go by the book, who won't prejudge us because of our unconventional ways."

- x x x x x -

"Hey, Angel." -- Faith cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear while she opened the beer bottle and closed the refrigerator door behind her with a kick -- "Long time no see. Word around is that you've made it big in life," she added as she headed back to the living room, "office with a view and a parking place close to the elevators."

Angel couldn't refrain himself from grinning in relief at the easy tone of the wayward slayer's voice. One of his first acts as CEO of Wolfram and Hart had been to see that Faith's criminal files got "lost" in the system, as a belated thank you gift for the part she had played in reensouling him a few months before. Now, as he explained their predicament to Faith, he pondered that it took a redeemed rogue to know one, and that alliances forged in the fight for redemption didn't break down easily.

Fred smiled brightly when she saw Angel reach out for paper and pen and start to write down the numbers that Faith was dictating to him. She felt someone tugging on her sleeve and looked down to see Spike standing beside her, handing her his latest drawing.

"This one is you," the boy informed her, pointing at a figure with dark hair that went almost to her waist. "And this is Wes," he added, pointing at the other figure, whose identity was pretty much given away by the glasses and the big book in his right hand… the one that wasn't holding Fred's hand.

"And this," Spike proceeded while Fred blushed a little and Wes made a big deal of cleaning his already spotless glasses, "is Knox."

Fred raised her eyebrows as he looked at the rather amorphous form that lay beneath her and Wes' feet.

"Really?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yep," Spike said, nodding his head. "I skinned him to make a new rug for your house," he told her conversationally, "and fed the flesh to the dog."

"Spike, we don't feed people to the dog," Angel said mildly, not raising his eyes from the phone as he dialed Willow's number.

"Not people," Spike patiently corrected him. "Knox."

"Maybe you should talk to her," Angel said, handing the phone to Fred. His cell phone rang and he looked at the display, standing up as he told them: "I need to take this. If she agrees to help, tell Harmony to book her in for the first flight to Los Angeles. Oh, and Wes," -- he started to leave the room, then stopped at the doorway -- "the raid to the ghouls' lair is scheduled for 11am: do we have those amulets ready?"

"They're in my office," Wes said, standing up. "I'll get them to you."

"Be good," he told Spike before leaving for his office. He hesitated for a split second before adding without much conviction: "Don't feed Knox to the dog."

- x x x x x -

"Knox, for God's sake, he won't bite you again!" Fred pleaded with her assistant as he stood at the doorway, loath to enter the laboratory. "And I need your help with this experiment."

"Yeah, Knox," Spike said from his place perched on a stool, merrily dangling his legs. "Don't be such a Nancy boy."

"We have a lot of work to do today," Knox grumbled, unwillingly crossing the threshold and taking the longest route to the sterilizer in order to avoid getting anywhere near Spike. "Why should you be the one stuck with babysitting duty?"

"I'm not babysitting," Fred quickly said, arching her eyes at Knox as Spike's eyes narrowed ominously, "I'm keeping him company. Angel and Gunn are out on a field mission, Harmony is helping Lorne with the preparations for next week's Katooga ritual and Wes has a lot of paperwork to do: Spike would be bored with him."

She took a wood box from the cabinet and placed it on the counter before Spike.

"Now," she told the boy, "Knox and I do have a lot of work to do today, but if you behave well and don't get into trouble," -- she opened the box, revealing several stones of different colors -- "and give us a little help sorting these stones by color, I believe I can squeeze in some time after lunch to build a real working volcano with you."

"A volcano?" -- Spike's eyes widened in childish wonder -- "A real one, with lava and everything?"

"Yes." -- Fred nodded her head in confirmation, smiling at his enthusiasm, and also because she felt rather proud of her little stratagem: the stones didn't really need any sorting, but the task should keep the boy busy until Wes came to pick him up.

- x x x x x -

Forty minutes later, Fred couldn't help but smile in sympathy as she looked at the deep furrow on Knox's brow. True to their deal, Spike had been dutifully sorting the stones by color and placing them in the glass jars she had given him, but he had also been prattling nonstop about pixies and goblins and leprechauns and whatnot. In the previous evening Wesley had managed to find a book with pictures suitable for a five year old, and it seemed that Spike had soaked up magical trivia like a sponge.

"Brownies are hairy and they have brown skin," Spike told them, throwing a blue stone into the jar with its peers. "And they dress in brown, too. Wes told me that."

"Well, that's interesting," Fred said with a smile. She didn't see Knox grit his teeth as the words 'Wes told me that' were said for the umpteenth time that morning.

"And goblins…"

"Just a second, sweetie," Fred said, holding up her hand as the phone began to rang. "Practical Science Department, Fred speaking," she said, picking up the phone.

"Uh hum," she muttered, checking the numbers on a notepad as she listened to her interlocutor, while Spike worked in silence, clearly not considering Knox worth sharing his knowledge with. "Yes, that's right. Yes, it's… what?" -- Spike and Knox looked at Fred as her voice suddenly rose in alarm -- "No, no, no, you can't do that. You can't mix an osmium salt with… **_Yes_**, I'm sure that it's an osm… Never mind, I'm going there."

"I'll be right back," Fred told Knox and Spike as she hastily hung up.

"I'm going with you!" was the prompt and unanimous response, making her stop on her tracks and give them an alarmed look.

"Sweetie," she said, turning to Spike, "I can't take you to Lab C-2 with me. It's…" -- she cringed at the idea of a warlike five-year-old boy wandering among the magical weapons they developed there -- "not a good idea. It's, it's…"

Spike cocked his head to the side, giving her a curious look as Fred struggled with the words, unable to tell a lie but knowing that it wasn't a good idea to tell him that she didn't want him anywhere near an especially crafted morning star that could smash a griffon's skull and simultaneously absorb all its powers.

"It's a restricted access area," she finally said brightly as she remembered it. "They have this super fancy iris recognition device there, and they wouldn't let you in. And Knox," she proceeded, arching her eyebrows warningly at her assistant, "has a lot of work to do; he must stay here. With you."

She was relieved when Knox heaved a resigned sigh and accepted his fate.

"Be good," she told Spike before she left in a hurry.

"Everybody keeps telling me that," he pouted.


	8. Help is on the way

"You'd better get down here right now, or I'll…"

"Or you'll what?" Spike asked flippantly from his vantage point. He was sitting cross-legged on the higher shelf of a steel rack that supported several boxes of different sizes and colors and, as of now, a five year old boy, a plastic battle-axe and an extremely expensive dual channel spectrograph.

"Or I'll climb up there and drag you down myself!" was Knox's exasperated response.

When Spike didn't reply and just stuck out his tongue at him, Knox finally snapped: he grabbed the nearest stool and placed it before the rack, clumsily but resolutely starting to climb on it. Realizing that he meant business this time, Spike quickly grabbed the spectro-thingamajig to which the prat seemed to be so attached and hung it over the edge of the shelf.

"Think you can catch it if it falls?" he said, grinning slyly when Knox stopped dead, transfixed by the sight of the four digit priced apparatus dangled seven feet from the floor.

"That's... not a good idea," Knox said through a dry mouth, his eyes trained on the spectrograph.

"What does it do, anyway?" Spike asked, cocking his head to the side and giving the device a critical look.

"Why don't you come back down here," Knox said warily, "and I'll show you."

"I don't think so."

"Spike..."

"No."

"Look..."

"Murder, murder, murder," Spike started to sing at the top of his lungs, juggling the spectrograph and causing Knox to grit his teeth in agony, "someone should be angry."

"Now don't..."

"The crime of the century: who shot little Bambi?"

"Spike..." Knox tried again, but it was hard to sound like an authority figure when he was also mentally calculating how many paychecks it would take for him to pay for the spectrograph if it was to be deducted from his salary.

"Never trust a hippie..."

"Is everything alright here?" -- Knox and Spike turned to the doorway to see Wes standing there, with his hands dug into his pockets and a leisurely smile on his lips as he decided that paying for a broken spectrograph himself would be worth it for the sake of seeing Knox cry.

"Hi, Wes!" Spike merrily greeted him. "Knox is being a pain," he tattled in response to Wes' previous question.

"That," Knox told Wes between clenched teeth, pointing at the spectrograph with a slightly shaking hand, "is a compact dual channel spectrograph with a 256 pixel photo-diode array detector."

"Then you shouldn't let a five year old play with it," Wes chided him with a straight face, entering the room.

"I was trying to talk him into handing it back to me," Knox hissed, "but he doesn't respond well to authority."

"Spike," Wes said, looking up at the boy and ignoring Knox's dirty look, "would you please give the spectrograph to me?"

"Okay," the boy replied, promptly starting to climb down the shelves as Knox watched in disbelief.

"Good boy," Wes said, smiling and ruffling his hair as Spike handed him the spectrograph. "All you had to do was ask nicely," he told Knox with a small self-satisfied smile. "He's five, for God's sake," he said, shrugging in feign puzzlement. "How hard can it be?"

- x x x x x -

"We should do that more often," Spike said as he and Wes walked toward the elevators, having left Knox to fume in the laboratory.

"We most certainly should," Wes replied with a wide grin.

"So," Spike said as they stopped at the elevator door, "when is Red arriving?"

"You remember Willow, too?" Wes asked, surprised.

"Who's Willow?" Spike asked.

"You just asked about her," Wes said, giving the boy a puzzled look.

"I asked about Red," Spike said, frowning slightly. "You said she's coming to help me."

"I said Willow is coming." -- Wes scratched his head, getting more confused by the minute.

"You said Red is coming," Spike insisted. "Who's Willow?"

"Who's Red?" Wes countered.

"She's…" Spike hesitated, suddenly looking perplexed. "You said she was coming to help me," he finally said, his voice trailing off as he didn't feel so sure any more.

"I said Willow is coming to help you," Wes said gently, kneeling down before the boy and placing a hand on his shoulder. "Willow does, indeed, have red hair," he offered. "I seem to recall…" -- he hesitated -- "someone calling her Red."

Spike shuffled his feet, his lower lip jutting up as he looked back at Wes, suddenly not so interested in that matter any more.

"Wes," he said in a small voice, "what's wrong with me?"

"I don't know, but we'll find out, little mate," Wes promised, patting the boy's shoulder and trying to sound as reassuring as he could as he stared into the scared blue eyes that looked back at him in fear and confusion.


End file.
